


No Call Backs

by brotherfuckers



Series: Striderclan [63]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Brothers, Deadbeat Father, Emotional, Family, Fluff, Gen, Mention of sex, Parents, Protective Striders, Stridercest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-04 05:06:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1076867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brotherfuckers/pseuds/brotherfuckers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>D is ‘enjoying’ himself at a party when a face from his past says hello. The following conversation is uncomfortable to say the least as D defends his family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Call Backs

D hates Hollywood parties.

If it was up to him, he would have left three hours before it started and taken a flight back to Texas a week earlier than he is scheduled to even leave the zip code. He would have been mid-flight right now, looking forward to the taxi home and slipping into their apartment. He would have been as happy sleeping against the door as he would have been in any of his brother’s beds. (Maybe that is an over-exaggeration, but maybe it is an under-exaggeration; he can’t tell which way his opinion wavers.)

A woman his agent has set him up with for the next two months makes her way over to him. She’s all smiles and perfect make-up, a far cry from the last time he had seen her, but it’s definitely better on her than the tears they had used on-set. (She’s going down in his Little Book of Actors as the ‘Best Fake Crier’ he has ever seen.) It’s been a good three and a half weeks since they last talked, even longer since they last saw each other, but that last scene of her still lingered somewhat. The crying scene is the haute topic for the night’s party. The attention has brought a smile to her face he hasn’t seen after weeks of slaving over which scenes to cut and which ones to leave on the floor.

They make idle talk for a while and she mentions a name he hasn’t heard in twenty years. He isn’t surprised. The man always had a lucrative business that stretched from one ocean to the other and a little farther. (Mom used to joke that Bro took after him; she stopped when Bro tried to walk to the airport and got five miles away by himself.) D brushes it off in the end. After all, this is an invite-only event.

A few other producers come to find him. A few have good business pitches. One has a complete piece of shit. He makes a note to look into the shitty one and hand it off to Dave (to play with and improve) while he tells the others to, kindly, wait a few months because this last one was a doozy and he needs a little bit of a time off before he jumps into the fray. They offer him their numbers. He slides the business cards into his suit jacket.

He has the next year and a half of his life scheduled out if he chooses to go with the last producer. His spiel is out-lived and out-dated, but he could work with it more readily than the others. Plus, with the Strider name, it might actually be a huge hit. The more bad things there are to see, the easier it is to negotiate with the producers after all. Although having the producer on-set for the majority of the shooting will be a huge inconvenience. He’s had to work around worse.

After shedding the others by excusing himself from any more inane conversation, he makes his way over to the long buffet table dotted with hors d'oeuvres and palate-cleansers. The end of the table has sweets piled up (a gift from an ‘old friend’, the notice said when it arrived; he hadn’t ordered any but he would call her tomorrow morning). The back of the table is lined with chardonnays, merlots, a few of the rarer syrahs, a pinot noir, pinot grigio, sauvignon blanc, a few champagnes--the list goes on.

He has never wanted a beer more than he does right now.

He grabs an empty red wine glass and drinks from a self-poured syrah. He takes a seat beside the sweets, hiding from the rest of the party. No well-wishing Hollywood-er would be caught sampling a fattening sweet in front of so many people. Taking just one- hell, picking one up off the floor would be enough to cause suspicion that they don’t care for their looks anymore.

As long as he’s here though, he takes a cupcake and takes a bite of it. The bitterness of the syrah makes the cupcake’s sweetness take on grotesque forms, but the second bite is a million times better than the last and he finishes it off in four bites. He eats another for good measure, and because if he doesn’t then he’ll feel guilty when he talks with their glorious creator tomorrow morning.

“Not watching your waist, then, Strider?”

He blinks and looks up at the man addressing him. He’s on the wrong side of his fifties and he obviously put too much effort into his appearance today. But then again, there isn’t one person at this party that didn’t pay a little too much attention today. Himself included much to his chagrin.

D stands to his full height to meet the man. He looks familiar, but every face and body at this party is familiar in one way or another. Paparazzi mostly. But sometimes he knows them through interviews, others internet, one or two actually know Bro by his smuppet dealer name, but still, they’re all familiar. And finally, he’s found someone he doesn’t have to look down at. Actually, he’s found someone he has to look _up_ to. (Excluding all the celebrity basketball games he’s been dragged to where the players always invited him to the team and he always told them he couldn’t jump.) The difference is only in about two inches, but it’s still enough to count. D surreptitiously glances down at his shoes and confirms his suspicions about possible lifts.

“Never really found much of a reason to,” he replies. “You should try one. They’re quite the treat.” He sips at his wine again, but suddenly the bitterness is enough to make his throat cringe. He takes it in stride, swallowing down a second sip stealthily. The sweetness from the cake is still in his mouth, but the bitterness from the wine isn’t amplified any more than it was the first time.

“I’m trying to watch my figure.”

“Pity; they are a treat, after all.” D’s mind is still trying to place where he knew this man.

“I’m afraid we haven’t met before, Strider. Feel free to call me Lalonde. I’ve seen more than a few of your movies.”

The wine glass at his lips saves him from everything. It prevents him from spitting up. It prevents his eyes from widening (damn the darkened lighting and his inability to wear shades for long periods of time in here); it prevents him from making a fool of himself; from running away; from showing too much emotion; from saying “father?”

He swallows the wine and when he speaks, his voice is steady. He’s afraid he’s spent too much time with his mother lately. “I hope you’ve enjoyed them.”

“Some more than others.”

“It appears that most things in life follow this same path. What do you do, Mister Lalonde?”

“A little of this, a little of that. I dabble mostly. Buy businesses that are going out of market, help them back on their feet, that sort of thing.”

“I believe I have heard of you, then. You’re part of the Somptueux Company, aren’t you?”

“I happen to be the founding CEO.”

“Congratulations on such an”--he sips his wine politely, hiding seething words behind bitter alcohol--”exquisite company.”

“I should be the one congratulating you, Strider. Your newest movie is quite the hit. The plot twists were delightful. Quite a captivating film, if I do say so myself. Definitely worth the praise it was given.”

“I appreciate your say-so.”

Except he doesn’t. This man before him--the figure of whom he now knows he recognizes from childhood photos that slowly disappeared from around the New York house to be replaced with actual family photos--stands before him in a business-like way. In no way is he a father, nor does he deserve to be. His approval of D’s movie means nothing to him, nothing at all. (But it does; he knew the man the longest of all his siblings and this means so, so much more to him than he would ever admit to even himself--even to his mother, of all people.)

“Is that a syrah you’re drinking?”

“It is.”

“Reminds me of my wife.”

“You’re married?” Of course he is. He and Mom never got divorced. For all he knows, the man probably still visits for a few weeks every year. Never during the winter or during school breaks, because they spent those up north with the family and _he’s_ never there--hasn’t been there once in the last decade-and-some. Do Rose and Roxy ever see him?

Does he even care?

“Lovely woman. Lives in New York while I travel. Quite the scientist.”

“I’m afraid I’m out of wine. Would you like to accompany me to refill it?”

“Certainly.”

A large part of him wishes that the older man would have declined. The rejoinder had been curt and deliberate. D had meant to interrupt the man and had meant for him to know that, but evidently nothing breaks through that facade because he takes the polite Leave-Me-Alone invitation as a legitimate invite.

"What about you, Strider? Any women waiting for you at home?"

"I suppose you could say that, more or less." He sips on the wine again, forcing himself not to gulp it down like he would a beer. The bittersweet lull in his throat comforts the scathing words and callous demands ready to jump out.

"Kids?"

"My brothers are still young. I'm helping to raise them, if you would count that as 'children'." _No thanks to you_ , he adds inwardly as he stares the man down. Lalonde blinks at him for a moment before he reaches out and gathers a flute of champagne in his hand.

"Well, at least they're not your own. Children are horrible- trust me on this. I have six of them."

"They aren't as bad as you would imagine."

"Your opinion will change when you become a father."

"I _highly_ doubt that considering my current disposition."

"They're all ungrateful you know. Kids, I mean. Not worth a damn thing and they think the world belongs to them. Like they can do _anything_ they put their mind to."

"Probably because they can."

"Pardon?"

"Children--they are more than capable of doing anything they set their minds to. Their minds haven't been molded by societal constructs yet. They can do anything they think they can because _no one_ has told them they can't yet."

"If that's what you believe. But just keep in mind, _I_ have six tykes. You just have a few brothers you've babysat over the years."

He has to sample his wine in order to quell the fire in his words and return to monotony. "Legal custody."

"Come again?"

"I have legal custody of them. An agreement with my mother, of course, but I've raised the two of them since before they can remember their own father."

"How long is that, then? Three years?"

He flexes his jaw and forces a breath out like Bro taught him to do when they first started sparring. It's calming enough to re-situate himself in the argument. He sips to gather his thoughts. Mom would be proud to see him pushing through this so forcefully. "Over a decade now."

His eyebrows shoot up. "I have to hand it to you, Strider. You kept the tabloids out of that one."

"It wasn't too hard to keep them out of my business. Persuasion is one of my strong suits."

"You still think those kids are worth it, though? After seeing how much trouble they are? Mine were little shits from the day they were born."

"You know what? I think they're _more_ than worth the trouble. They're pieces of shit at times, yeah, and they hardly understand why 'no' means 'no' at others, but taking them under my wing was the _best damn decision_ I have ever made _in my life_."

"What makes you say that?"

“Several things.” At this rate, he’s going to have to open a new bottle of syrah, but his tolerance to wine is something to write home about. He learned it from the best and the best consists of a beautiful mother with a shit-for-nothing husband. “Coming home and seeing them there, watching them grow up, some more sentimental things I’m _sure_ that you, as a father yourself, are fully aware of.”

“Couldn’t be damned to care about them.”

“I’m sure your kids know that.”

“My kids don’t even turn to me to ask a question unless their mother has already turned it down.”

“Perhaps if you were around more often and they could build better relationships with you, that would have changed.” The barbed remark stings more than just his talking partner though. It hits D hard in the center of his chest and makes his heart run cold as he remembers all the time he has spent in Hollywood over the years, rather than in Texas with the others. But Dirk and Dave both turned out well and they both love him and love seeing him but what about when he isn’t there?

He tells himself that he’s different.

(He can’t stop wondering if they’re the same.)

“Perhaps. However, my statement still remains: children are pieces of shit and they constantly nag at you without a specific reason to do so.”

“All children have motives behind their actions, believe it or not.”

“They’re messy, loud, obnoxious.”

“Unattuned to our society after being nonexistent in it for nine months and even less than that beforehand.”

“Clingy.”

“Unable to care for themselves, but as they’re new to our world it’s our responsibility to ensure that they don’t get completely fucked up from that. I’m sure you knew that, what with you having to feed them and all.”

“They don’t listen.”

“A child’s world revolves around them, as it very well should.”

“And why should it?”

“Children are the future. _We_ have to nurture and care for and love and respect them until they understand that _they_ are the best thing that ever happened to us. They get used to the attention and they turn it on others. And when that happens, the world is a better place. It’s also the reason why adults, who believe that everything should work in their own favor twenty-four-seven, are considered childish and moronic.”

D can feel the impending victory encroaching, but it isn’t sweet and the wine is sour -not bitter, sour- as it slips down his throat. He can’t get his mind off of the twins or how they were raised. He craves seeing them, hugging them, _holding_ them, but he can’t, not with this asshole here and so many miles in between.

“They’re incapable of acting like an adult.”

“Why should they?”

“Come again?”

“They’re children. There’s a specific reason that we have a set words to mitigate the separation of ages. With each word, a different level of intelligence and responsibility is offered to them out of respect to what they’re naturally capable of. Children are _not_ adults and under no reason should _ever_ be forced to act as such. Children are children. It’s borderline abusive to force your children to grow up before their time. They age naturally and rapidly and they learn from their mistakes, but they shouldn’t be expected to multiply or divide or balance checkbooks and work a nine-to-five job when they should be allowed to run around the house and break things and make mistakes. For fuck’s sake, they need to make their mistakes in order to learn from them.

“Adults forget how hard it is to be a kid, too, because it’s been so long. The pressures of childhood are so far behind them that they merely expect a kid not to yell or scream with laughter in the middle of a park. Parks are made for fun and kids express that fun in their own way. Sometimes it comes at the price of telling the heavens _look at me_ but, you know what? That’s what childhood is about. Not that you would know, considering it’s obvious in just the way that our conversation has gone that you weren’t around for any of your kids’ childhoods.

“My previous statement remains the same, as well: deciding to raise my brothers was the best decision I have ever made. I watched them grow and I watched them learn. To watch a mind be molded by what he loves and to see the pure beauty that is a child growing up is the best damn thing that has ever happened to me. Getting my first big break and the elation it caused is _nothing_ compared to the pride and joy those two boys evokes within me. So, since you are by no means a father sans your sperm donating abilities, kindly _fuck off_ and _never_ mention children around me again.”

He places the glass of wine down on the table and pulls from his sunglasses his breast pocket. As he turns away, his hand carelessly knocks over the glass and the contents of it spill over Lalonde’s shoes. It is by no means an accident, but D does not react to it. He does not even care to pay attention to the reaction it caused.

Sitting, safe, outside in his car, he pulls out his phone and hits the speed dial. He puts the car in reverse and pulls out of the lot, half-thankful for the reason to leave.

Being that it’s nearly four in the morning here, it must be butt-fuck late there or ridiculously early and none of them should be awake either way, but Bro answers the phone with a voice not at all reminiscent of sleep.

“Did I fuck up?” D asks.

“Whoa, wait, what are we talking about here?”

“The twins. Did I fuck up?”

“What brought this up?”

“I just finished having a conversation with the asshole.”

“Asshole? What asshole?”

“ _The_ asshole. You know. _Him_.” D runs a hand through his hair. “Did I fuck the twins up? Not being there and all?” His voice threatens to break as much as he tries to steel it against the tide of emotions.

“No, D. You didn’t fuck them up. I mean, look at them. They’re strong kids. They can care for themselves. They’re happy when they see you and that’s something far greater than we ever had. You call nearly every week, sometimes more. You’re always in their lives, you know what’s going on as far as what I know at least. They may not tell us _everything_ but they tell us what’s important and who cares beyond that? They’re still kids, in their own rights. They grew up well and in a loving home. They have a relationship with their mom that’s probably better than more than half of the United States; their sisters adore them and Roxy looks up to them more than she'd ever admit. They grew up well, D. Just because you were in Hollywood for maybe one or two birthdays doesn’t mean that you fucked them up. Besides,” he laughs, “they still won’t let you forget that.”

“But, they’re not fucked?”

“If by fucked you mean that they’re tuckered out after riding my dick for a couple hours last night? Then yes. That’s true. But in no other sense of the word did you ever fuck them up. Do you understand me?”

He’s silent for a while, watching the somewhat slowed traffic around him as he finds his way back to his place. “Thanks,” he says at last. “I, I really needed that, Bro.”

“Don’t _ever_ compare yourself to him again, ok?”

He nods, despite the fact that he knows Bro can’t see him. “Yeah. Okay. It was stupid. How are they?”

“They’re good. Tired out, though. Long week at school, but they got through it, just like we did. We went and saw the premiere of your movie, too. They loved it. Then we fucked.”

“I wanted to fly all of you out here but after _your_ last stunt and the fact that they had midterms, I didn’t want you guys to be inconvenienced.”

“They appreciated it. Well, Dirk did. Dave loves seeing everything from the red carpet, though he won’t admit it. Got an A in all subjects, though.”

“Good. Proud of him. Both of them. I know Dave was struggling for a while there.”

“See? You know about his life.”

D swallows heavily and tries not to focus on the wavering water in the corners of his eyes. “Yeah, I see. Thanks, Bro.”

“Anytime, D. Love ya.”

“Love ya, too. Tell them I say hi. Send my love.”

“Do you want to talk to them?”

“Are they awake?”

“Dave’s still prattling on about how good your movie was. Personally, I don’t see the marvel.”

D snorts. “Why’re you awake, anyway?”

“Late night commissions.”

“Well, put Dave on the phone. I’ve got an idea to throw his way.”

Dave accepts the idea immediately. They go back and forth on the shit-tastic idea that the man had thrown him until it becomes somewhat remarkable. Dave writes it down in his book of ideas set away for when he finishes college and then D tells him about the next idea he has lined up. Dave groans for him when he tells him about how the man wants to be on-set for at least the majority of the production and D appreciates the sentiment.

“They’re so annoying, though. Don’t tell me you agreed to that.”

“Well, it’s a good idea. I’d rather snatch it up than let someone else get it.”

“You’re still coming home for the holidays, right?”

“Yes, Dave. And I know you got your presents I mailed. I have more waiting for in-person. And I have Christmas gifts, too. No, they’re not interrelated. I know you don’t appreciate it when we so much as pretend to say that.”

“I can’t wait to see you.”

“I miss you too, Dave. Send your brothers my love.”

“Bro has enough of the shit. Wanna talk to Dirk?”

“No, let him sleep. I’ll still be up when he wakes up. Have him call me.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I heard you got As on your tests.”

“Hell yeah I did.”

“Good. Proud of you.”

“Thanks, D.”

“Ok, gotta go. Police trap.”

“Don’t talk on the phone and drive at the same time asshole!”

D laughs and hangs up, skating through the cop trap without being pulled over.

**Author's Note:**

> For more information please check out our work at striderclan.tumblr.com; we have more stories, head canons, art/pictures.


End file.
